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Residents in the remote rural village of Penmachno, which sits in the isolated upland Machno valley area of North Wales (Conwy), have complained – via the local community council – that Openreach and BT recently left them unable to make or receive calls for several days due to a heat related fault that started on 19th June 2025.
According to the Community Council (Cyngor Cymuned Bro Machno), locals were said to have been left feeling “deeply concerned by … [the] telecommunications fault“, which they stated had impacted “all landlines” connected to the local Penmachno telephone exchange (PSTN).
Particular concern was also expressed by the council for older and vulnerable individuals, those who rely on landlines as their primary method of communication and had been left “isolated and unable to seek help in an emergency“. According to the council, there is also “no viable mobile phone coverage” in the centre of the village “from any network” to help fill in the communication gap (you can still get a weak signal outside this area).
On Monday morning the local authority stated that residents had already made multiple reports to BT and Openreach, but the fault still hadn’t been resolved and there was said to be “growing frustration” at the apparent “lack of urgency and coordination from BT … with no clear explanation or timeline for repair, the community is being left in the dark.”
Daniel Tomos, Clerk of Cyngor Cymuned Bro Machno, told ISPreview:
“This is a completely unacceptable situation. The inability to dial 999 puts lives at risk. Our community deserves better – this must be treated as a priority by BT and Openreach.”
To make matters worse, BT have previously removed every payphone from the village. But the good news is that the fault has now been fixed.
A Spokesperson for Openreach told ISPreview:
“We’re sorry for the outage to our copper network in Penmachno which affected customers’ landlines. This was due to recent high temperatures causing critical exchange equipment to overheat. We’re working with our partners to ensure our equipment is resilient against extreme weather conditions.
The outage was resolved on Monday afternoon and all customers should be back in service. If you’re still experiencing issues, please contact your service provider (the company that you pay your bill to). And if you are a vulnerable customer, please let your service provider know so that they can make a note on your account.”
Sadly, it’s not unusual for network repairs in remote rural areas to take much longer than urban ones, particularly due to complex issues of access and traffic management. Over the years we’ve seen examples where, in rare cases of extreme damage, rural areas have been left to wait for 6-12 weeks before repairs (here, here and here) – often due to delays caused by the need to get permits/permissions to conduct the necessary work. Sometimes power companies may also need to be involved, which can add another complication.
However, in this case the problem appears to have been inside the exchange itself (BT’s kit), which overheated during last week’s heatwave. Such events are extremely rare, although this being a remote rural exchange probably means that the equipment was housed in a very small building without air conditioning (some rural exchanges aren’t much bigger than a shed). Despite this, the recent temperatures would not usually have been high enough to cause such a failure.
The good news is that the government’s Shared Rural Network (SRN) project is due to start building a new mobile mast in the area this month, but of course that will take time to go live.